1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and a method for Internet Protocol (IP) bandwidth trading in an exchange environment.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The public Internet (the Internet) is a worldwide roughly hierarchical connection of Internet Service Provider (ISP) networks that are connected to millions of computer and computing devices. Each computer or computing device, i.e., end device, is connected to an ISP network. The interconnection of the ISP networks allows each ISP network to connect to a number of other ISP networks and define preferences for incoming and outgoing data traffic on these connections. The protocol used to support these interconnections is called Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).
The Internet access is bought from a single provider or multiple providers. These suppliers offer all IP routes to the customer. In some cases, a subset of all IP routes is sold, which could be known in the industry as paid peering, or partial transit. Another way to buy Internet access is from a reseller who aggregates and manages all its suppliers IP routes and redistributes all IP routes to the buyer. Other resellers allow the buyers to choose one specific supplier among a pool of suppliers. In this scenario, if the buyer wants multiple suppliers, the buyer must provision multiple connections to other suppliers.